Brotopia

By Emily Chang

Description

Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman.

For women in tech, Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops, where millions of dollars grow on trees. It's a "Brotopia," where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties.

In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don't Be Evil! Connect the World!)--and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.

Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Interviews with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer--who got their start at Google, where just one in five engineers is a woman--reveal just how hard it is to crack the Silicon Ceiling. And Chang shows how women such as former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, entrepreneur Niniane Wang, and game developer Brianna Wu, have risked their careers and sometimes their lives to pave a way for other women.

Silicon Valley's aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. It's time to break up the boys' club. Emily Chang shows us how to fix this toxic culture--to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.

Reviews

Symptom, but not the cause.

2

By Fun sapian

Pages and pages of examples of symptoms, but almost nothing of the cause.
Also devoid of context, like WHY did women have more success during WW2 and the Space Race? (Maybe due to major threats to Americas security? What about other countries today?
Instead her book comes out as an accusing males (most if not all) as animals (well, we are!). Case in point is Lena. It is a high quality photo of woman's face and bit of shoulder used as a bench mark for quality of digital images, the rest of the photo was discarded, thrown away. This book is same, focuses on a small part, missing big picture.
Page 83-5 there is quotes by Ms. Whitney of men who sound just like Sheldon Cooper, or even Dr. Doolittle, male characters with awkward reactions to women (but not suffer ailments depicted in page 102-104. Just awkward around women).
Why is that? Perhaps it is better to look into American culture that at a very early age lays down gender rolls, but lacks social morays, and worse, something Peggy Orenstein eludes to is a castration of girls sexuality so they are unable to standup for themselves.
A good start and I hope author researches more, but leaves a mountain of questions for now.